The Gamer's Quarter

[Mr. Mechanical]

I picked up The Snake Oil Wars by Parke Godwin last week. It was on one of those tables in the library at school that has old books they're giving away for free. I'm really enjoying it! It's funny, and makes me want to read the Waiting for the Galactic Bus, which Snake Oil Wars is a sequel to.

The premise is that five million years ago two aliens named Barion and Coyul came to earth and started messing around with the anthropoids already on the planet, bringing over the cultural threshold and speeding up the evolutionary process. Now Barion has left and Coyul is by himself. The eternal souls of all those humans they helped evolve have been turning up and Coyul's elders have told him to deal with the mess he's made. The book itself is about Christian Fundamentalists who are all pissed off that the afterlife isn't how they thought it would be, and so they accuse Coyul of being the devil in disguise. There's a trial, and the part I'm at right now Jesus Christ is about to be called as a witness to Coyul's defense.

Riveting!

Also, Sergei, you will be happy to know that I've started reading Dostoyevsky's The Idiot and am as far as chapter five. It's still setting things up with the characters it seems but it's been enjoyable so far. Much more readable than Crime and Punishment, or what little I managed of Crime and Punishment before putting it off for a while. I remember you telling me once that it was your favorite of his novels, so I will be sure to let you know what I think when I finish it.
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Mr. Mechanical

[seryogin]

The novel reaches its most melodramatic and exciting moments in part one. It's still great after that, but...something.

I really gotta email, it's been a while, James.
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[Dracko]

DC really, really hate Alan Moore.

There do seem to have been a number of inconsistent movements regarding certain Alan Moore projects that give the appearance of a personal dimension to the decision making process. And a recent demand, as Moore did with "V For Vendetta," that his name be taken off the Zack Snyder "Watchmen" movie seems to have been the last straw. Dunbier was fired, and "Dossier" was withdrawn from international distribution - so that no copies be sold in the country in which Alan Moore lives.

Also, Diamond is sending out a message from DC saying not to sell any copies to anyone you think is going to resell them for the international market. And anyone that does "does so at its own legal risk".

[helicopterp]

Hey, I'm reading Watchmen! It's my first graphic novel. I like it.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[Scratchmonkey]

I'm reading De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater. Haven't really read enough of it to draw much of a conclusion yet. It's slow going as I discovered yesterday that I have a mild astigmatism that makes reading a little more difficult than it should be. So now I always notice that I'm straining to focus and this makes me a little leery of extended reading sessions.

[ryan]

I got a proper copy of The Theory of Moral Sentiments last Christmas that I'll finally be getting to, thanks to a few days off of school whatnots. I want to double up with it and Confessions. Tomorrow it begins! Wee!
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[seryogin]

I have a reputation in these here parts for being an anti-American, which isn't true at all.

Proof: I'm reading True Grit, the best Western novel ever written, again. It's a great book and one of the few Westerns that won't make a right-thinking human being nauseous. A lot of fun and filled with characters that are usually very annoying, but handled here with the enough skill to be not only bearable, but damn compelling.
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[Dracko]

Back in my later undergraduate years, one of my friends lent me To the White Sea by James Dickey, of Deliverance fame. Needless to say, he knew what he was doing. It was one of the most fascinating and inspired pieces of fiction I'd been given to read. The premise is appealing, and in the end enduring, in its simplicity: An Inuit World War II bomber crewman, Muldrow, a pragmatic survivalist in body and mind, is shot down over Tokyo, right before the beginning of the firebomb raids. Lost in hostile territory, trusting nothing else more than his sharpened bread knife, he recalls his Alaskan childhood, and wishes for nothing else than to head north, to the ice regions of the country. It's a trek for survival as well as a seemingly mad enterprise, but it is written with clarity and understanding and the sort of understanding that all to easily more sentimental authors are likely to to be blind to.

Everything in this lyrical tale is ice, in spite of its war-torn setting. It's unlike any tepid adventure novel you'd be given to read. The books brims with a sense of earthy purpose, ice cold efficiency as well as evocative imagery, the outcome clear in the distance. It's a contemplative tale of warfare and the natural state of man. It's sheer, brutal poetry.

I found this novel this afternoon for £1.50. Sergei, I'd highly recommend this one to you.

On that note, I've also read Yukio Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. What to make of it is easy. Figuring out its point is trickier. A tale of childhood idolatry gone awry, among a host of other things, it's hard to conclusively see what side Mishima takes, and maybe that's just it: The sea of the title is ever present, and this is another tale of nature, flirting with anthropomorphisation. The simplest way - but one that still leaves me in doubt as to what I read - to tackle the ending lines, which left me smirking, would be to say that its the final collusion of the two major protagonists' aspirations, in ugly ways that not even they understand. They both represent the sea, both as symbols of glory and betrayal, and the alternating facets they. But if To the White Sea is nature in its essence, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace is one of judgement. It's just not obvious what rules it's following, beyond the condemnation of lying to conceal the inexpressible. Mishima's perspective is certainly intriguing, however, and one I'll be keeping an eye on.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[helicopterp]

I have no time to read anything and that kills me. Except for bad political "research" papers, but I have to read those.



Edited for Dracko's grammatical sanity.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[Dracko]

Wait, what?
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[Dracko]

Someone to talk to me about Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy.

It's one of those classics of weird British fantasy fiction that I'd like to read, but don't have the money to at the moment. And I don't know all that much about it either.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[Shapermc]

I'm reading All The Pretty Horses and just finished up the first section/chapter. It's ok.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Harveyjames]

[Shapermc]

Has anyone read World War Z? It looks kind of great.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[seryogin]

[Shapermc]

;_;
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[dhex]

the rob the bouncer book is fucking excellent.

really fucking excellent.
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[seryogin]

[dhex]

1) guidos suck and it's interesting to see someone who hates guidos more than i.
2) he's a fucking great storyteller.
3) the narrative arc is pretty boffo.
4) guidos! threaded eyebrows! victory!
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[simplicio]

[seryogin]

[dhex]

ehh man he writes one of like only three blogs worth reading.

seriously don't sleep.
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[Shapermc]

[simplicio]

The thing about ATPH was that it's all about some guys on some adventures, and though those adventures get pretty wild, they're generally plausible. There's none of the madness/holiness that infuses most of his work and truly works in synchronicity with his prose. Blood Meridian takes a similar thing but works it through an epic bloodbathed desertstarved lens that would make Mel Gibson wet his pants. And Suttree takes normality and drives it to degenerativism instead of adventure, which turns out to be a far more satisfying trip.
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"Worlds turn the new machine to thee. To thee. Though, thine the new machine space."
-Kurt Schwitters, 1919

[Shapermc]

I really enjoyed the prison stuff of AtPH, but yeah, the rest of it was like a tour guide book.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[helicopterp]

Herman Melville's "Bartleby" in one sitting last night. My goodness. It was not a little like an American "Overcoat."
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[ryan]

Appian is now doing what he can to erase all of the business materials I've had to read the past few months. I keep getting behind, each year I never read all of the books I received from the Christmas before. Fidddlleeessttiiiccckksssssss.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[dhex]

to celebrate my release into masters-hood, i'm reading orlando patterson's slavery and social death. i got a bunch of books on my birthday, including that one, because if people are going to insist on buying me presents then i'm going to keep it as utilitarian as possible (that's not clothes).

also got leo strauss's the city and man; mircea eliade's book on yoga; julius evola's men among the ruins.
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[Harveyjames]

[dhex]

books can be putrid. i'm sure someone somewhere gives out naomi klein books.
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[boojiboy7]

[dhex]

how about we leave them unfound?

my boss boss at work loaned me a book called the motel life by willy valutin (some indie rawk guy) that was actually not bad at all. it was interesting at least.

it was no magus, of course (takes drag on misty 100) but what is...what is...?
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[helicopterp]

Herman Mellville introduces Billy Budd, Sailor with the subtitle "an inside narrative." If you have ever read Mellville, you immediately understand that the ensuing narrative will be anything but "inside." Instead, Mellville distills Billy Budd's character through his superiors, through his peers, through the late-18th century British maritime climate of impressment and resulting mutiny. The result is akin to a photonegative of a fascinating character--fascinating not for his eventual "tragedy," but for his comic purity. Mellville's final point--if, indeed, novellas assert points--seems to be the absurdity of that purity in anything other than a vacuum. Indeed, Mellville's story, hardly inside, is an anti-vacuum. Also, I'm pretty convinced that Billy Budd is supposed to be tacitly gay, as are many of the other characters, but probably thousands upon thousands of people have already covered that subject.



Dave Eggers' What Is the What isn't half-bad for Eggers. I don't like Eggers.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[Shapermc]

I got a ton of PKD books for christmas and I just wanted to mention a weird printing error:

The copy of counterclock world that I got starts on page 27. They were not torn out or mis-placed, but just not there.

Freaking weird. I got a gift receipt so I'll replace it, but just the strangest error.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[ryan]

I am currently reading Hunger by Knut Hamsun and Science Fiction : A Historical Anthology.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[dhex]

man i got more books than i know what to do with now. an awesome collection of essays on the cathars, a hardcover version of revolt against the modern world, and uh some other stuff that i won't get to until at least february. oh shit actually i forgot i got linda stele's book on mayan cosmology so i can brush up on my daniel pinchbeck smacking skillz.
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[elvis.shrugged]

I got way too many books, too. Five, all from the Library of America. American Noir of the 1930s and 1940s, American Noir of the 1950s, Raymond Chandler: Stories and Early Novels, Raymond Chandler: Later Novels and Other Writings and Dashiell Hammett: Complete Novels. That's like...25 novels? Considering the other volumes I've recently purchased (every Fleming Bond novel and Writing Los Angeles), I have far too much reading to do.

I've only read the first four or five chapters of Farewell, My Lovely so far. Wish me luck!

[Harveyjames]

[dhex]

well, i think of the adbusterian current as similar to creationism.

there are criticisms of globalization/evolutionary theory to be made; naomi klein/the discovery institute aren't the folks to be making them very well, at least. but they're very popular. a lot more people will read klein/TDI publications than more well-researched works, but at the same time how much of an impact does it really have across one person?

for example, one's lack of evolutionary belief/knowledge has virtually no impact on their life - there's no cost or benefit with a layperson being either a "believer" in evolutionary theory or in creationism beyond social markers. it's about the group one belongs to, not one's stance on biology.

on this tack, you can see how quickly most (liberal/left) folks will go from "oh no creationism is stupid and its child abuse to teach it to kids" - i.e. they're not part of *my* tribe! - to "evolutionary psychology is a fascist capitalist brainwashing tool" without thinking about how they got there. it's also a tribal issue - you see conservative commentators jump on some psychology study that they think reinforces their ideas about public policy.

but whether they believe in whatever degree of genetic influence in behavior and tendencies is, the underlying issue is whose group one belongs to, not one's actual knowledge of biology. it's totally unimportant. you will go about your day, work your job at planned parenthood or the church or the organic anarcho-communist compost pile station and whether you can even begin to explain basic evolutionary theory or even get all the way through genesis, the end result will be the same. it's sort of like fashion - meaningless in any real sense, yet socially quite meaningful.

now, my libertizzles might jump in here on me and say "but someone else's economic ignorance does impact my life - they vote for statist policies, they fail to save or borrow wisely and then the government comes in to 'do something' - i.e. distribute my tax dollars - because of these assholes." to which i can only shrug and say "well, to some degree this is true, but focusing on this angle is rhetorically unsound and will only give you a headache." i would then probably make a joke about neal pert because i'm a dick. people love their own stuff, to be sure, but they also want to feel badly about it because of that strange schizoid culture split between "america is guided by god" and "america is satan."

i mean, yeah it totally fucking sucks that people are fucktarded, but truth will out in one very real sense - systems adapt or die. biologic research will go one, cloning efforts will go on, gmo will go on, and so on...just maybe not in america. you can't win them all. of course, this is influenced by my feelings concerning evolutionary theory as well. - i.e. we are collectivist by nature to a large degree, and collectivist calls to action will always be the cornerstone of political and public life.

or perhaps i'm a defeatist crypto-statist who is unwilling to stand up for true liberty.

either way that and two dollars will get you a ride on the bus.

personally, i think klein's an airhead but if michael moore can be a millionaire and people not only pay money to read ann coulter's books but actually get mad at her schtick as a kind of sick hobby...well, if nothing else it proves that capitalism creates the widest array of potential outcomes.

even if i sometimes wish those outcomes would all go take a leap into the grand canyon.
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[Dracko]

Sex slavers and rapists want to restore their image with the assistance of Marvel comics.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[dhex]

man, comics are straight up weird.
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[Harveyjames]

Dhex you should read my blog in which every sunday I talk about interesting comics you may not have heard of! It's quite the hit with all the cool kids! Sometimes I get nearly 10 comments!

[dhex]

honestly i find it very difficult to read comics. it's very tiring, for lack of a better term. or perhaps "visually confusing" and whatnot. i slogged through the invisibles because i got most of the oblique references, and i liked the discordian meta-joke at the end. but beyond that, v and watchmen, i've not read any. my brain may be too shitted up with wordplay to appreciate mixed media.
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[Harveyjames]

Those comics you listed are sort of like Hardcore Comic Reader's comics. They're more Romance of The Three Kingdoms than Wii Sports. You might get on better with Chris Ware:

[dhex]

i find the whole thing very confusing - do i read right to left? left to right?

i can get by on achewood because it fits on one screen. and i'm a simple guy so simple pleasures suit me best.

(ps romance of the three kingdoms is actually a hilarious read if you're into picaresque type nonsense.)
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[Harveyjames]

you read left to right like you always do, gonad breath

like I had this shit down when I was 2 years old

[dhex]

actually, in the original image you read:

first panel left
down one panel
then big mid panel
then first upper right
down one panel
then down again (left panel, right panel)

i never read comics as a kid (they cost money and books from the library were free) so this may explain why i don't "get" the whole images and words thing, or rather, why it seems like hard work for a sentence or two of text.

shrug! some people don't like novels. such are the vicissitudes of life.
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[Harveyjames]

Yeah, it's weird. Dess doesn't like novels or films!

Of course it's not just a sentence or two of text, you understand, because most of the tonality, setting and action is conveyed through the pictures.

[Dracko]

dhex, you should still read Pax Romana!
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[dhex]

yeah i'm totally on the whole fuck movies thing. i have no patience for that sort of thing.

is pax romana the jordan maxwell tie-in?
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